‘Cars’ Rip-Off Review: ‘The Autobots’ (2015)
Where there’s success, there’s often imitators. And when it comes to the beloved films of Pixar, success is never in doubt. Way back in 2006, the trailblazing studio released the film Cars to wide acclaim. Kids loved it, parents loved it, and small studios looking to cash in on a marketable idea positively adored it. Ever since Cars released, the world has been inundated with a slew of low-budget animated films starring talking cars. These blatant rip-offs range from amusingly bad to mind-meltingly awful. And, being a connoisseur of so-bad-it’s-good cinema, I’ve decided to track down and watch these films and share my findings with the car-loving world. First on my list: 2015’s The Autobots.
Looking to Buy a Used Car? Here are some tips
The shameless rip-off that is ‘The Autobots’
While Hollywood is obviously at the forefront of world cinema, China is slowly catching up. Over the last decade, Chinese-made blockbusters have begun earning massive amounts of money. Many of these films are animated, and while most are original, a few push the boundaries of international copyright laws a little too far.
2015’s The Autobots is a textbook example of this. In fact, it might be one of the most shameless rip-offs ever produced anywhere in the world. And that’s saying something. Not only does it steal the whole talking-car thing from Pixar, but the title is also suspiciously lawsuit-worthy. Considering how much money the live-action Transformers films make in China, this sot-so-subtle trickery isn’t too surprising.
The Autobots tells the tale of a nine-year-old kid who creates three intelligent, talking cars: K1, the hyper one, K2, the no-nonsense one, and K3, the lazy one. The group decides to enter a treacherous race, and spend most of the rest of the movie either training for or participating in said race. As you can imagine, this makes most of the movie’s middle a dreadfully boring slog of repetitive racing scenes and nonsensical dialogue.
This crazy film also has the distinction of falling into yet another category of bad movie: the stitched-together TV series. Much of its lack of cohesion comes from the fact that this “film” is actually a bunch of episodes edited to feature-length. This formula doesn’t have the strongest track record, to say the least.
A whiff of controversy
Unsurprisingly, The Autobots stirred up a bit of controversy upon its discovery in the West. With character models that look like low-resolution PS1 versions of the characters from Cars and a poster that looked shockingly similar to the one for Cars 2, it didn’t take long for the dots to be connected. Chinese critics were similarly unfriendly to the film, and the controversy spread all over Asia.
Eventually, Disney itself got involved. Naturally, a lawsuit followed. By the time Disney won the case, the film had been exposed as not only blatant copyright infringement, but also a production made possible due to loophole-protected government funding. To this day, the film’s director claims he developed the film independently from any Pixar influence and dubbed the film’s Chinese detractors “a new generation of traitors” for not supporting domestically produced animation. Yikes.
Stocking Your Glove Box? Here are some essentials
As you can see, the world of legally murky Cars rip-offs is a weird and fascinating one. And trust me, there are a lot more of these films out there. This journey, as they say, has only just begun.
The News Wheel is a digital auto magazine providing readers with a fresh perspective on the latest car news. We’re located in the heart of America (Dayton, Ohio) and our goal is to deliver an entertaining and informative perspective on what’s trending in the automotive world. See more articles from The News Wheel.